Reuters Knows A Guy Who Knows A Guy Who Totally Saw The iPad 2 Today

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Have you heard the news? Someone totally saw an iPad 2 at The Daily launch event in New York City this morning. Pinky swear. No pictures or anything like that. Just a description that matches every other rumored description that has been floating around for 6 months now. Only with even less detail. Totally happened.

I’m poking fun at the Reuters report on the matter, of course. Do I know that it’s inaccurate? No, it could be completely accurate for all I know. But I mean, come on.

First of all, what exactly is a “Reuters eyewitness”? Do they work for Reuters? But they didn’t write the story? Or does Reuters own this person? Why are they not just an “eyewitness” or a “source”?

Secondly, why on Earth is Reuters using a PR company to push this story to our “tips” email account? I mean, is this a news story or a work of art?

Third, the entire “meat” of the story is three sentences. The rest is all filler. Here’s that meat:

A Reuters eyewitness saw what appeared to be a working model of the next iPad with a front-facing camera at the top edge of the glass screen at a press conference to mark the debut of News Corp’s Daily online paper in New York on Wednesday.

A source with knowledge of the device confirmed its existence, adding that the final release model could have other features. News Corp and Apple declined to comment.

So we’ve got the “Reuters eyewitness” and a second unnamed “source”. The eyewitness has described the most obvious thing in the world if you’ve read a single Apple rumor in the past 6 months. The source somehow manages to state something even more obvious.

Fourth, isn’t it a bit odd that Apple would allow anyone to show up at their event with an iPad 2 prototype when they know the room will be packed to the brim with journalists?

Fifth, um, this is the age of the cameraphone. Where’s the goddamn picture?

As our own Erick Schonfeld (who was at the event) notes, “a room full of press, and nobody got a picture of it either. I didn’t see it, but my eyes aren’t so good.”

Unrelated, I saw an iPhone 7 at a Burger King in Idaho the other day. I swear.